Posts Tagged ‘hezbollah’

Israel Passes the Test: A thought about the “Don’t Fear the Beeper” Attack

Posted: October 6, 2024 by datechguy in Israel, middle east
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Troi: Run programme.
Simulated Worf: The control system for the primary containment field is not functioning.
Simulated LaForge: Something’s severed the ODN conduit between here and the antimatter storage deck.
Troi: Geordi, could you repair the ODN conduit if you went into the crawlspace?
Simulated Worf: Sir, that crawlway is in a warp-plasma shaft. He would never survive the radiation.
Troi: I know that. Geordi, could you repair the conduit?
Simulated LaForge: Yeah, I think I could.
Troi: Then do it. That’s an order. (He exits)
Riker: End simulation. Something told me you wouldn’t let this go. Congratulations. You passed.
Troi: That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? To see if I’d order someone to their death.

Star Trek TNG: Thine Own Self 1994 (Via Chakoteya.net)

Something hit me when I was reading this tweet by Yashar Ali

Particularly this bit of it:

The Mossad already got walkie talkies in the hands of Hezbollah back in 2015. The walkie talkies contained an extra large battery and also gave the ability of Mossad to eavesdrop on ALL Hezbollah communications, which it did for nine years.

Now while Hezbollah has been hitting Israel bigly over the last year, at least till operation “don’t fear the beeper” finally was launched they have also launched plenty of rockets and various attacks over the 9 years that Israel was collecting data.

That means that in order to keep Iran and their proxy terrorists in the dark during that time they would have had to allow some of those attacks to get through over that time as if they were unexpected because they could not risk them assuming their communications were being intercepted.

In hindsight of course this decision may in fact lead to the destruction of Hezbollah as anything resembling an effective fighting force and possibly to the freedom of the Lebanese from under the Iranian proxy’s thumb.

But to achieve that Israeli citizens were put at risk and some likely died.

It was a tough call, the time of call a person who has the lives of thousands or millions has to make or to quote the TNG episode above before Troi figured it out: “My first duty is to the ship.”

I’m old enough to remember when the US had leaders able to make those hard calls.

Chicken Run and Some Good Advice

Posted: August 26, 2024 by datechguy in Israel, middle east
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If you are living in a face/shame culture like Hezbollah these stories must really cut deep.

One Kuwaiti user named Fahed uploaded a picture of a dead chicken, adding cynically: “Allahu Akbar! Hassan Nasrallah’s response! Hezbollah’s response! The number of chicken injuries rose to 27 chickens, 5 of them are critically injured, with first-degree burns to the wings and beak, after the chicken pen was targeted in response to the assassination of Fouad Shukr. He says ‘Our missiles are accurate!’”

A parody account named after Syrian tyrant Bashar Al-Assad wrote “A video showing the result of Hezbollah’s response to Israel, where dozens of Israeli chickens were killed and wounded. Is it reasonable that my ally Hezbollah would respond to the assassination of the party’s top military commander by killing chickens?

This one is my favorite:

The Google translation:

Translated from Arabic by

The chicken massacre was not a coincidence, but a strategic plan! The goal? To prevent the opponents and enemies of the “resistance” from gloating after every bombing and saying “They didn’t even hurt a chicken.” Hezbollah finished off the chickens and chicks with premeditation and deliberation, in order to deprive us of the pleasure of joking and mocking its response and missiles! 😅🐔

All of that must cut deep but in the end there are a lot of resources being used to defend Israel here and I think Lindsey Graham gives the best advice when it comes to stopping this. Start worrying about the puppeteer rather than the puppets:

I’d include a demand concerning the attacks on the north but you get the picture.

A moment of crisis

Posted: October 17, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Marine Sgt. Steve Russell was on guard duty. It was Sunday, a day of rest.

As he gazed out of the compound’s gates in Beirut, he saw a truck turn and head for the Marine outpost.

Then a wave of flames swept across the truck’s bumper, sending tons of explosives in a suicide attack.

Amazingly, Russell survived. But the explosion killed 241 military personnel—almost all of them Marines, who had come as part of a peacekeeping mission after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It was the largest loss of life among the Marines since Iwo Jima in World War II.

A seminal event in the chaos of the Middle East, the bombing 40 years ago still provides some insight into what led to today’s events.

As an investigative journalist for ABC’s 20/20, I spent several months back then in an attempt to piece together who was behind the attack and why.

Here are the reports:

Here’s what we found:

–Iran financed the attack on the Marines to humiliate the U.S. government and its presence in Lebanon, particularly when the Reagan administration pushed for Arab countries to make peace with Israel.

–Syria, a longtime ally of the Islamic Republic and enemy of the United States and Israel, provided the logistical support for the operation.

–Islamic Jihad, a front organization with ties to Hezbollah, provided the manpower in Lebanon. Heading the operation was Imad Mughniyeh, one of the Middle East’s prolific terrorists and bomb makers. As a chief strategist of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia group, he deployed truck bombs and improvised explosive devices throughout the region, including the war in Iraq.

–The Reagan administration failed to recognize the danger the Marines faced in Beirut. For example, the guards protecting the compound were under strict orders to keep their guns without any rounds in the chamber to protect against civilian casualties. Moreover, the American military command failed to inform the Marines about the possibility of an imminent attack—information received a few days before the explosion.

–The Reagan administration largely ignored the attack’s impact on the Marines for two reasons. First, only days after the attack, the United States invaded Grenada to rescue American medical students. Second, a significant divide existed within the administration between those who wanted retaliation against the terrorists and those who argued that the government had no definitive proof of whether Iran and Syria were involved.

What can we learn about today’s issues from the past?

First, a clear connection has existed for decades among Iran, Syria, and the Palestinians. You don’t need a smoking gun to know that a link exists between the trio. Syria cannot play as prominent a role today because of its ongoing civil war.

Second, Hezbollah has become a powerful influence in the region, particularly as the leading party in the Lebanese government and an ally of Iran. Moreover, Hezbollah provides aid and assistance to Hamas, the main instigator of the attacks on Israel.

Third, Shia Muslims, the smaller of the two main branches of Islam, control a vast swath of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. That’s a significant shift from the balance of power in the past 40 years when Sunni Muslims controlled much of the territory. That’s why Saudi Arabia leaders, who are from the dominant Sunni tribe, have started to talk with their longtime enemies from Iran.

Fourth, it’s important to note that the Sunni-Shia détente also includes the Palestinian leadership, which is primarily Sunni. Moreover, it’s important to note that the Palestinian political groups, which historically made no differentiation among Sunnis, Shia, and Christians, have created ties with distinctly religious regimes.  

Lastly, the United States has a history of putting itself in harm’s way in the Middle East, wagering that a show of military strength will somehow frighten its adversaries. So, too, has shuttle diplomacy played a role in the U.S. strategy.

Let’s take a good, hard look at how many failures the United States has had in the Middle East over the past four decades. Only the first Gulf War stands as a victory.

It may be time to sit this one out.                                                                  

Hope or Hezbollah?

Posted: August 11, 2020 by chrisharper in war
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By Christopher Harper

For nearly a decade, I lived and traveled into Beirut—a time that molded me into a journalist.

In Beirut, you worked hard and played hard. Almost every day, journalists went into a dangerous city, where many thousands of people died, and almost every night, they retired to the bar at the Commodore Hotel.

My wife Elizabeth and I arrived in Beirut in 1979, where we lived for two years. After that, we spent many days back in Lebanon during a variety of news stories, including the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. We returned in 2011 during the Arab uprising to see Beirut had risen from the ashes, with restaurants and businesses booming from an economic resurgence.

Although we both loved the city and made friends with whom we remained close for many years, recent events did not surprise us.

Lebanon has existed for decades without a government. When it had a good leader like Rafic Harari, a businessman and prime minister, he ended up dead in 2005 as the victim of assassination. Ironically, last week’s explosion occurred just as a United Nations tribunal was set to determine the guilt or innocence of those suspected of killing Harari. See https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-tribunal-hariri-idUSKCN2512IC

For the past year, Lebanese have been protesting the current government for its corruption and inability to deal with day-to-day issues, such as garbage collection. As an example, my former colleague can only received $500 a month from his ABC News and government pensions because the government has placed severe restrictions on the country’s banking system.

Although the Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, is a Christian—as delineated in the country’s constitution–he is beholden to Hezbollah, the Shia militia, for his power. He remains in power despite the resignation of the prime minister and the cabinet.

Hezbollah has links to Iran and Hamas and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Hezbollah was behind the 1983 attack against the U.S. Marines that left more than 200 dead and the hijacking of TWA 847 in 1985 that left a U.S. sailor dead. The group has a vast militia, which rivals the country’s army, and has engaged in a variety of battles with Israel.

More important for Lebanon, Hezbollah helped create a corrupt and negligent political system that created the lack of enforcement at the port and allowed the storage of 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate.

Moreover, a new report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies asserts that Hezbollah siphons off billions of dollars from around the world. Money is laundered through Lebanon, allowing Hezbollah to function as a kind of parallel state, one with its financial and social services. See https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2020/08/04/crisis-in-lebanon/

When my wife and I lived in Lebanon, the country embraced the song “I’ll Will Survive” as it national anthem. The resignation of the government may be a step toward survival, but Hezbollah still has a choke hold on the country. No survival will occur until the organization no longer holds significant power in Lebanon.

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